The Global White Snake as Digital Activist Project Lecture by Liang Luo

Drawing on long-standing oral and literary traditions of the White Snake legend, this talk reframes the White Snake as a “resident alien” figure whose serpentine identity has historically triggered suspicion, exclusion, and suppression in the human world. The lecture considers how that metaphor takes on renewed urgency in the context of heightened xenophobia during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how contemporary Anglophone creative projects mobilize the White Snake narrative to engage questions of immigration, identity, and minority activism through digital media and platforms. This event is free and open to the public.